How Does Race Affect Perceptions of Police Trustworthiness?

ABSTRACT:

While race is often discussed in relation to police, there is still little empirical evidence on the role of race in shaping citizens’ evaluations of government performance. Using an experimental design, this study examines how different levels of police performance affect perceptions of police trustworthiness and to which degree observed effects vary by individual race and across communities with different racial makeups. Specifically, we study the effect of different levels of performance on perceived trustworthiness in two communities—one predominantly African American and one predominantly White—and replicate across two samples: a sample consisting of primarily White participants and another consisting of only African American participants. Results indicate that the interaction between the racial composition of a community and individual race plays a critical role in shaping the effects of performance among White participants, who appeared more sensitive to community context than African American participants. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See Bouckaert and Van de Walle (2003) for an opposing view.

2 NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 2017. Law Enforcement and Violence: The Divide between Black and White Americans. http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/HTML%20Reports/law-enforcement-and-violence-the-divide-between-black-and-white-americans0803-9759.aspx

3 For an overview of concerns related to MTurk, see Necka et al. (2016).

4 MTurk masters are respondents who participate in numerous studies and have accumulated a high evaluation based upon their prior participation. To reach the status of “master,” respondents must, among other things, participate in a large number of studies, indicating that they likely answer more than one study in a single month.

5 A key challenge with Mturk relates to recruiting participants who fall into minority racial groups (Berinsky, Huber, and Lenz 2012).

6 For more information, see www.turkprime.com.

7 Our survey also included an item asking respondents, “In your opinion, how trustworthy is the Blanchard Police Department?” (0 = not trustworthy at all, 7 = extremely trustworthy). The composite measure of perceptions of trustworthiness is highly correlated with the single-item measure of perceived trustworthiness (r = .869, p < .000). We opt for the index of perceptions of trustworthiness in this study because it is a more comprehensive, nuanced measure of trustworthiness, and also because it is more commonly used in the public administration literature.

8 For competence, benevolence, and sincerity indices, no single factor loading is below 0.8. Cronbach’s αs are over 0.9, which represent high degrees of internal reliability.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A3A2065838).

Notes on contributors

Min-Hyu Kim

Min-Hyu Kim ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University-Hainan. His research interests include human resource management, organizational behavior, and local government. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in journals, including The International Public Management Journal and The American Review of Public Administration.

Gregory A. Porumbescu

Gregory A. Porumbescu ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers-Newark. His research touches on issues related to e-government, transparency, and citizen evaluations of government.

Milena I. Neshkova

Milena I. Neshkova ([email protected]) is an associate professor of public administration at Florida International University. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research is focused on participation and inclusion of broad interests in administrative decision making. She is also interested in administrative reforms, public financial management, and strategies for fighting corruption.